


Blue and Grey

by jeromevaleska



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Civil War, Developing Relationship, Drama & Romance, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Historical, Historical References, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reader-Insert, Rivalry, Romance, Romantic Fluff, True Love, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 15:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6334492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeromevaleska/pseuds/jeromevaleska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You find Tom wounded on your property, and you, a Yankee girl, end up taking him in, the last thing you expected was to fall in love with a Confederate solider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue and Grey

Tom Fairfax couldn't remember how long he had been walking, he doesn't have a sense of time anymore. All he could remember was the acrid black-powder stench of battle, the gut-wrenching death cries of his men as they fell around him, the way their blood stained his hands when he pulled through their pockets to find spare cartridges. He remembered the choking, unfathomable pain he felt upon the battlefield.

Now all there was just icy wind turning his face red and chapping his lips, and the dark forest around him. The soles of his boots were nearly worn through; the ruined flesh of his left shoulder ached in the cold, even with a wool blanket draped over what was left of his tattered jacket.

There's a weariness in him that goes deeper than flesh, deeper than bone.

When he sees the cabin, a dark shadow under the deep blue sky, with a yellow glow coming from one window and a curl of smoke rising up from the chimney, hope and dread bloom in his chest together. He knows he won't last another night out in the open, it's not physically possible. He pulls the blanket around him tighter to hide the gray and marches forward.

He's about twenty feet away, sunk ankle deep in the snow, when the front door clangs open.

You strode out in a calico dress with the barrel of a Springfield leveled at his head.

"Stop where you are," you barked, and with a slight waver of your voice you added, "just stay back."

He took a moment to drink you in. If you killed him now, he thought he should at least be grateful he got the chance to see a woman one last time. You were much smaller than he was, you'd barely pass his shoulder if you stood next to him. He couldn't move his eyes from your face – such soft skin, full plump lips, and flashing, piercing eyes. After everything, if this was the last thing he saw, it'd be a blessing.

With your feet planted firmly on the wood slats of the porch and the muscles of your arms pulled taut under the weight of the rifle, you stared daggers at the stranger on your doorstep. It had been months since your father and brothers marched away in Yankee blue, never to return. When you saw the blood and mud on this man – his clothes were stiff with it – you couldn't help but think of them. You could see the horrors he had witnessed written on his face, and you knew that your kin saw the same.

"Why aren't you at the front, solider?" you questioned with furrowed brows. "Fighting's not but ten miles east of here now."

"Ain't shootin' so straight these days," he replied quickly. His voice was quiet, filled with exhaustion and defeat.

He shrugged the blanket from his shoulders and let it land in the soft snow, revealing the grey underneath.

"Got nowhere else. No one else. 'M a long way from home," he paused, pursed his lips, swallowing and steeling himself, "If you could show a little kindness," he started before he finished, "to a countryman, I'd be forever in your debt."

You lowered the barrel suddenly. You thought of your frail mother and sister inside the cabin behind you. You'd die before you let harm come to them. But you impulsively decided, what harm could a half-dead, wounded man do?

You sighed before a frown crept its way onto your face, letting the rifle drop and waved him in.

"Come on in," you said calmly, "but you can't come in here dressed like that," you added in a hiss once he stepped up to the porch. "Give me your arms."

He scrambled to hand over his pistol, which didn't have any bullets anyway, and the long knife from the sheath at his belt. He wanted to thank you for not shooting him, for giving him a chance, but the words wouldn't come.

You disappeared into the cabin for a couple of minutes; through the door he could hear women's voices speaking back and forth. He leaned against the house in the gathering dark, with his temple pressed against rough wood. Suddenly, this place feels like a home – like someone else’s home, like the kind of place he doesn’t belong in anymore. Not after the things he’s done.

When you reemerged, your hands were full of clothes – brown canvas trousers and thick leather braces, a white linen shirt and a corduroy jacket. Two black boots dangled from one of your hands.

"These belonged to my brother," you told him solemnly as you passed them over. "The Rebs shot him down at Fredericksburg."

He only nodded in response.

You shot him a hard look, eyes narrowed when you said, "If you breathe one traitorous word against the Union in this house, as God is my witness, I will put a bullet between your eyes. Understand?" you pointed your index finger towards his forehead to get your point across.

"I do," he said quickly.

"The only reason why I'm helping you is because I don't wanna bury a confederate on my property," you said before you left him alone on the porch in the rapidly lowering light, to shuck off his stained and torn clothes and replace it with this dead man's clothes. It was the first time he had been able to change his own clothes in a while, and he tried not to let his struggling bother him. When you came back, you grabbed the pile of gray wool out of his hands and shoved it into a crevice between the porch and the frozen earth.

"We'll burn it tomorrow. Hope you weren't attached," you sassed.

He shook his head. Then, so quiet, you almost didn't hear him, he tilted his head towards his left shoulder and murmured, "I couldn't..."

You frowned, then picked up his meaning. Something indefinable crossed your face as you stepped towards him. You reached to pluck out the dirt and leaves that fell in his hair, wiping what you could away and letting it fall to the ground.

Now that you were up close and quiet, not threatening him or pointing a weapon at him, Tom could see that you were even more beautiful than he had thought: your eyelashes were long and soft, spread across your cheekbones as you looked up at him. It shouldn't, but his heart caught at the sight of you.

"There," you said when you were finished, and you looked up to meet his eyes, tucking a stranded hair behind his ear that fell in front of his face, "What are you called, anyway?"

"Tom Fairfax," he told you, trying to straighten his back, searching to have some pride in who he was, even if he didn't know what that meant anymore.

"Tom Fairfax," you nodded, and extended your hand out for him to take, "I'm Y/N, Y/L/N."

You brought him inside, into the warm main room of the cabin, glowing in golden-red light from candles and firelight. When you introduced him to your mother, a hollow grief-stricken shell of a woman who gave him a kind look and a handshake, and your little sister, a quiet, precocious nine-year-old, he struggled to keep himself composed and neutral.

The night before, he had slept alone under a tree, covered by a handful of branches, with an empty stomach and no way to keep the damp snow and frigid night air away. A handful of nights before that, he had slept in a makeshift hospital, asking God to let him die. And before that, he had spent countless months sleeping in trenches and on cots and in the muck; surrounded by doomed men. To go from that to this filled him with an unbearable, ecstatic gratitude that he wished he could probably express.

Even though the war has broken you, and even though it was you who let him in, it became clear that your mother was the one reigning head of the house.

"Where're you headed?" she asked him as he took a seat at your table in front of hot stew and warm bread.

"Don't know," he told her before he finished, "just couldn't be where I was anymore."

"Haven't you got any family?" she questioned, hands at her hips as she eyed him.

"I had a brother," he clenched his jaw, it had always been the easiest way to describe what George was to him, but even the thought of him made him freeze up. "We lost touch a long time ago. I don't know where he is now."

Your mother nodded dispassionately.

"Well, you ought to stay till spring," she stated sternly, and you shot her a fiery look in response to that. "You're not fit for fighting and there's plenty of work 'round here 'til then."

"Yes, ma'am," he nodded, and he couldn't remember a time in his life when he had ever been this deferential. "Thank you, ma'am."

Later, you led him up a rickety ladder to an upstairs loft. Tom could barely stand up straight under the low ceiling, but there was a straw mattress on the floor with a heavy blanket over it, and that was enough for him.

"You're an angel of the Lord, Miss Y/L/N," he said in a tender manner.

He smiled weakly at you, because now that he was warmed up, with food in his stomach, he was starting to feel like himself again.

"I'm no such thing," you huffed, but he could see your cheeks redden, and his smile widened in satisfaction. "Goodnight, Mr. Fairfax," you added before you shut the door closed.

It doesn't take long – or it doesn't take as long as you had thought it would – for the four of you to settle into a satisfactory rhythm. Tom escorted you and your family into town and to church on Sundays, and let your mother assign him household chores. It took you weeks for you to admit it, but you finally conceded that having him around had its advantages – he always got the best deals at your general store, the manager was ten years his senior, happily married, and ought to be too smart to be flirted with.

It took you longer for you to accept how easily your neighbors welcomed him into your close-bound community, and how easily they trusted him. You could see the insinuating looks the two of you got when you were out together, but you never forgot who he was. You never forgot the colors he was wearing when you first saw him – the uniform you burned to ashes. It was a thing no one else knew; a secret you kept without knowing why, or at least that's what you told yourself. It took Tom a long time to ask you for a razor, because he knew that if you had one, it would have belonged to one of the dead men in your life. But at a certain point, the wiry mess of hair on his face became more than he could bear.

You sharpened your father's razor and set him up on the porch with a hand mirror, a bowl of warm water and a half-used cup of shaving soap. The snow and clouds had let up and the white-covered world gleamed bright under a cold sun.

He maneuvered the razor with his right hand, it had been a while since the last time he had done this, his hand was tense, and even in the warped mirror he could tell he was doing a terrible job.

You walked by him, wrapped in a long, dark coat, with your hands full of firewood and your cheeks pinched red by the cold, you gave him a hard look and set down your load somewhere to the side.

You grabbed him by the chin and tilted his face up to yours, much to his surprise. He gave you a rueful smile, then winced when the fresh cut at the corner of his mouth smarted.

"You're making a mess of this," you heaved a sigh. "Let me," you added, pulling off your gloves and held out your hand until he put the razor in it.

You stepped between his parted knees, and the sudden closeness made him straighten his back. You hesitated, just for a moment, but it was long enough for Tom to see that you had only ever done this for your father or brothers. You were both quiet for a long beat, breathing puffs of condensation into the space between you two.

The sudden intimacy of this hit Tom like a bolt of lightning; all he could think about was how easy it would be to touch you, to wrap his arm around you, to pull you into his lap and press his lips to yours. He had spent weeks trying not to wonder what it would be like to take comfort in you, the woman who saved him from the elements and himself, because he could tell that you were better than he was, but now every treacherous desire he had for you came rushing forward.

There was no brush, so you rubbed your fingers on the damp soap and swiped your hand across his chin.

"This'll be the only time I'll do this," you told him, staying as composed as possible, though there was a waver in your voice that you were fighting to conceal as you scraped the edge of the blade against his skin. "Pay close attention, because you'll be on your own next time."

He tried not to smile, though his lips curved into a half smile without his permission. He knew you wanted him to be his own man, to rise above his infirmity. He had already been on the receiving end of several of your lectures about it.

You pressed your hand against his shoulder to steady yourself, then against the side of his neck to hold him still, and he fought to push down the ache in his chest.

"Tell me about your brother," you mentioned suddenly.

"George really wasn't my brother," he started, and you narrowed your eyes at him before he was able to continue.

"What else you been lying about?" you accused.

"He was like my brother, the only person on earth who had stayed with me through the years, and that had meant more than blood," he described, and you nodded your head as you listened to him. "When the war started," he told you, "he went north to fight with the boys in blue. He was always smarter than I was."

You were so close now, standing over him with a look of deep concentration on your face.

"I never knew what I was fighting for. He always did," he mused. You didn't say anything, just kept scratching the razor gently across his cheeks and jaw, with your other hand warm on his shoulder.

"My younger brother, used to send us cartoon sketches of camp life until he was cut down at Gettysburg a few months ago," you admitted, attempting to swallow the lump in your throat and acting as if the subject wasn't as painful as it was. "He was a good kid, just wanted to make something of himself, make his family proud, didn't deserve what he got," you quavered, but then you quickly gathered yourself back together, "but he died fighting for something he believed in, that's what matters."

Tom didn't tell you that he was there, too. The thought that one of his bullets killed your brother in the midst of that bloody, hellish maelstrom was ludicrous, but the thought that you might even entertain the idea sent a chill through him.

"Where were you going, when you came here?" you asked him, after a long pause.

"George always talked about setting up in Nebraska Territory. Someplace under the wide open sky," he shrugged, "I had nobody waitin' for me back home, so I thought maybe I'd go there and wait for him."

He felt your hand stall, and you shot him a look of disbelief, "You were going to walk to Nebraska in the dead of winter," you said flatly, "doesn't sound like much of a plan, Mr. Fairfax."

He just gave you a tight a smile in response when he said, "Never was one for plans."

You felt something clench inside you, all of a sudden. You could see in his face that he had seen too much death to hope that George was still alive, and it hit you that his walk was something he only half-wanted to live through. Whatever their sufferings were, at least your brothers never felt the aching, yawning loneliness that you saw in this man under your hands.

You wet a cloth and ran it across his face and neck, wiping away the soapy residue and leaving behind clean, damp skin.

Then, without warning, you dipped your head, bent slightly at the waist, and with one hand pressed to each of his shoulders, planted your lips to his right cheekbone. It was only for a few seconds but it felt like time fell away. He smelled like woodsmoke and leather and soap; his breath was hot on your cheek, tickling your skin. You saw his eyelids slide shut.

Later, you'll tell yourself that you don't know why you did it, but it's a lie. You kissed him because he's lonely and because you are, too. Because you can see how much he needs you. Because despite yourself, you want to erase some of the awful things that have happened to him, even though you know it's not possible. And, hell, because he's handsome, and because he's even more handsome when he's clean-shaven, you realized.

When you pulled away from him, he looked up at you with wide eyes. You moved to go inside, and his hand closed around your wrist. You didn't look back at him – you couldn't – just twisted your arm until he released you, and you were quick to disappear into the cabin like nothing happened.

The next month was plagued by too many stolen glances and too much stifled longing. You both got good at figuring out how to touch each other without letting it seem too purposeful: You let your fingers brush his when you passed him things; when he walked you through town, he let you take his arm or pressed his hand to the small of your back. The worst of it, you thought, was when necessity forced you two to sit too close to each other in the pews during Sunday services. The press of his thigh against yours, even though it was through layers of fabric, made you shudder and pray even harder for salvation.

It was past midnight on a cold, winter night when you woke up to your little sister's hands on your shoulders, shaking you awake. When your eyes opened, she told you to be quiet and listen. You could hear muffled, faint cries coming from the loft.

"It's Mr. Fairfax," she whispered.

"Go back to bed, I'll take care of it," you told her sternly.

As he rushed towards the Federal line, the loudest thing he could hear was the sound of his own breath, coming in short, panicked gasps. To the left of him, to the right, he could see artillery shells take out dozens of men at a time. He saw their stricken faces the night before, and now he could hear their voices silenced one by one.

He told himself to keep running, to follow his orders even if they kill him. In front of him, a solid blue line grew larger and larger as he got closer. His palms were sweaty while they were wrapped around the smooth wood of his rifle, with its sharp bayonet fixed towards the Yankee troops.

A sudden searing, tearing pain ripped through his gut and sent him to the ground. All around him, gray-clad soldiers rush past him, still on their way to the fight. He teared at his clothes – ripped open his jacket and pulled his undershirt clear over his head. If he could see where the ball went in, he'd know if he has a chance, but his stomach was wet with blood and he knew it was a killing shot. His eyes slid shut.

All there was to do now was wait, but there was someone over now, someone who had him by the shoulders, someone who whispered his name so loud he could hear it over the din of battle.

His eyes shoot open.

He was jerked awake suddenly, sitting up and struggling for breath. He doesn't remember how you got there, or why, but you were sitting next to him, perched on the edge of the mattress with your legs folded under your hips; you were lit in golden candlelight from a lantern on the floor.

The bone-chilling night air wrapped around his chest and back. He looked down at himself, then squeezed his eyes shut, grateful that it was all just a dream. In the dim candlelight, you rushed by his side, hushing him as he quivered against the mattress.

"It's all right, everything's all right, you're okay," you cooed in his ear. He opened his eyes, and you could see that they were watery and red-rimmed. The sight of him like this, rubbed raw and haunted by things you could only imagine, teared through you. You brought your hands to the sides of his face, but it wasn't enough. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders and hauled him against you. The heat of him – his chest against yours, his arm around your waist, his breath against your shoulder – seeped through the thin cotton of your nightgown.

You turned your face into the curve where his neck met his shoulder and even though you knew better, you pressed your lips to the warm skin there. The sigh he emitted, the way his arm tightened around you, made a flood of warmth spread out from your chest, down your arms, all the way to your fingertips. In some dim corner of your mind, you could see how inappropriate this was to have him in your arms like this, to know how badly you both wanted each other and let it happen anyway – and you were trying so hard to let go of him. Not hard enough, though.

Something akin to instinct brought your lips to his temple, his forehead, his cheeks and jaw. You felt the hard muscles under your hands soften; you felt him sigh again and melt against you. When you pressed a kiss to the exposed flesh just above his scarred, right shoulder, he shuddered in your arms.

You smiled warmly to yourself. This man had been making you into a fool from the moment you first saw him, because he exposed your soft heart for what it was, and because he was torn apart, piece by piece, all of your old hatreds and prejudice shredded away. Without words, he told you every day that he needed you, that he wanted you, that he could love you, if you would just let him.

Then in an instant, without giving it much thought, your mouth was pressed against his, your lips fitting together perfectly like puzzle pieces waiting to be slot together. He tugged you tighter against him, parting his lips under yours. You buried your fingers in his hair and uttered a soft moan when his tongue slipped its way into your mouth. It felt like something he never thought he would get – like a homecoming. He lost himself in you for a long moment before you pulled back, gasping for air.

"You shouldn't kiss a fella like that," he murmured. "Not if you want him to ever leave you alone again."

"I don't want you to leave me alone," you admitted, heaving a soft sigh afterwards, and he felt a hot fire that shot through him when you said that.

He pulled you into his lap and across it, letting you fall back onto the mattress beside him. You went so willingly, never once taking your hands off of him; it was almost more than he could believe.

"Touch me, please," you begged softly, his heart fluttered upon the soft spoken words he yearned to hear from you for as long as he could remember. As much as his body sang out for it, he didn't dare press his hand between your legs, so he ran his palm over your cotton nightgown, along the curves of your shoulders, your breasts, up and down your long arms and narrow waist. He combed his fingers above your hair and kissed a hot trail from your neck to your collarbone, stopping just above the lacy neckline of your chemise.

He would be lying if he said touching you didn't make him feel a little more complete, a little more like a man. The quiet whimper he drew from you when he rolled one hard nipple between his fingers shot straight to his groin, and he had to shift his hips away from you to hide his growing erection.

You let him kiss you for what felt like forever; it felt like the longest he had held onto something so pure and beautiful in ages and ages. But at last, your hands went still on his shoulders.

"You should try to sleep," you advised, though there was a strong lack of conviction in your tone, pressing your hands against his chest and then sitting up. He sat with you, catching you with his arm around your waist.

"I'd sleep sounder with a pretty girl to keep my bed warm," he smiled and pressed his lips to the side of your neck, making you gasp in response. The sheer shock of having you so completely was starting to fade, and now he was hardly ready to let you go.

You pulled away from him reluctantly, even though every inch of your body craved more attention from his own. "You'll be sleeping out of doors if my mother found me here like this," you told him, stifling the soft laughter that threatened to spill out.

You stood, bent at the waist to keep from hitting your head against the rafters, lifting the lantern in one hand and smoothed your rucked up nightgown down with the other. You made your way to the door and paused to say, "Goodnight, Mr. Fairfax."

It felt a little odd calling him that, but you grew so accustomed to it that you said it anyway. You almost told him that you loved him, almost, but fought against it, for some reason, maybe it just wasn't the right time, and maybe a part of you thought back to how improper this was. He had a look on his face, too, like he was holding back something he had been longing to say, probably the same inner conflict as you, so he just replied simply, like how he did every night, "Goodnight, Miss Y/L/N."

Spring came early. The snow turned into slush, and as the world warmed, the slush turned into a vast sea of mud and muck. The forest surrounding your homestead turned from white to green.

Those who ought to know say that the war was bound to end soon, but there were still too many Rebel incursions along the Tennessee border and too many names added to the list of Union dead. There was a rising tide of anger in your little hamlet, an outrage and frustration that exploded when volunteer troops started to march streams of Confederate prisoners through town.

The first time it happened, you and Tom watched it together. You observed as your neighbors – gentle souls who sat beside you in church every Sunday – jeer and spit and howl at the defeated men. You understood their pain and rage – you felt all of it and more over the deaths of your father and brothers. You wondered for a moment, if not for Tom, you would have joined them.

But then you saw how Tom's jaw clenched and unclenched as they passed by, and you noticed them as he must – mere boys in mismatched, torn uniforms, their bare feet sticking in the mud, their wounds untended and gangrene. You slipped your hands into his and led him away, neither of you could afford to feel anything about it.

It was a bright, chilly morning when Tom found you hanging laundry to dry. He walked up to you with his hand shoved in his pocket and his head down. You were so damn beautiful to him – bathed in sunlight and surrounded by panels of white sheets – and it wasn't making his mission any easier.

When you saw him, you smiled softly. It was almost too unbearable, he nearly had to turn around right then because it was so stunning. He doesn't recall when exactly it became more frightening to speak his mind to you than to run towards cannon fire, but he supposed it was around the same time he realized how utterly and completely he had fallen in love with you.

"Look," he pulled a folded broadside out of his pocket, the kind that got pasted up in saloons and general stores, and handed it to you. "Lincoln's givin' out land for practically nothin'."

You raised an eyebrow and unfolded the paper in your hands. You read over the type carefully. For fifteen dollars, he could have one hundred and eighty acres of wide-open, Western land.

"He's not giving it to Confederates. It says so right here," you noted.

"So I won't be a Confederate anymore," he shrugged, and snatched the sheet back. "You're the only one who knows that about me. I could be anyone," he stated before he added with a tone of disappointment in his voice, "can't be here much longer anyway. You can see how things're changing."

You pulled a clean, white sheet from your basket, stretched up to clip it to the line, and picked up another. The thought of him leaving, of him being so far away sent a wave of icy dread through you, but you managed to keep your expression hard and neutral. You knew what he meant – with the way the war was changing the world, the way the war was changing people, he couldn't be safe here much longer.

He tucked the paper back into his jacket pocket, his eyes were fixed on the ground, but then he said, "They're giving double the acreage to married couples."

You froze up upon hearing him say that all of a sudden, and your heart was beating hard in your chest. You thought of it a million times since that night in the loft – what it would be like to make a home with him, to let him take you to bed in a way that God wouldn't frown upon, to let yourself be his wife. But you managed to straighten your back and level a steely glare at him nonetheless.

"If that's a proposal, it's the worst one I've ever heard," you said flatly, shaking your head as you continued hanging the clothes.

"How many have you heard?" he frowned, and furrowed his brow.

The answer was, of course, none, but you just gave him a coy smirk and raised your eyebrows expectantly.

He stepped forward, his boots squelching in the muddy earth. Reaching forward, he pulled the cotton sheet out of your hand and let it land in the basket. His arm curled around you, tugging you against him until your body was flush with his. The air around you two was crisp and cool, but he was so warm; at the feel of his breath, hot against the side of your neck, you turned your face into his chest.

"Marry me, Miss Y/L/N," he whispered, and you fought to keep your tears at bay upon hearing his proposal. It didn't matter anymore whether he wore blue or gray. Maybe it never did.

Words couldn't come, even though you wanted them, so you nodded your head against his shoulder and reached up to take his face in your hands. The pads of your thumbs brushed the stubble along his jaw.

"Never felt like—“ he started, because even though you have already agreed to be his, maybe he ought to throw in a few more flowery words for good measure. "No one's ever..."

He trailed off and looked away. He wished he were the kind of man who could put a voice to what you've done to him – wished he could tell you that it was your kindness that drove him back from the brink, your touch that had made him feel like a man again, when all he had been before was a broken solider.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him down, crushing your mouth to his through the midst of your tears. It was nothing like the chaste peck you first gave him, nor was it like the searing, staggering kisses from the night in the loft. It was sloppy and uncoordinated, all bumping noses and clashing teeth, because neither of you two could stop smiling like fools.

You fisted your hands in his shirt and whispered softly against his kiss-swollen lips, "I love you, Tom," you said finally.

"I love you too," he replied, like he had been waiting to say it all his life.

He started to think that this – this – was why he was spared, why bullets and artillery shells and the elements couldn't kill him. He was meant to make this woman happy. He was meant for this moment. He was meant to be with you, and only you.

After a while, Confederates on their way to prison camps in the North became a routine sight in town. You and Tom saw it happen again, and again and again. But then one of them – a blond haired boy in a tattered gray jacket who couldn't be a day over eighteen – saw Tom and shouted out for him in a hoarse, Carolinian drawl that sent a bolt of panic shooting down your spine.

You tried to keep steady, keep your body from shaking, and your eyes flickered up to his. When you saw the grief and horror and guilt on his face, when you saw that he was paralyzed by it, all you could do was grab his hand and yank him through the crowd and all the way home.

You prayed to God, and to Mary and the angels and all that was holy, that no one noticed.


End file.
